1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to multimedia communications. More particularly, the present invention relates to the delivery of an interleaved multimedia stream over a diverse computer network.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the proliferation of connections to the internet by a rapidly growing number of users, the viability of the internet as a widely accepted medium of communication has increased correspondingly. Bandwidth requirements can vary significantly depending on the type of multimedia data being delivered. For example, a low resolution, low frame rate video telephone call may require only an ISDN connection, while a high resolution video broadcast of a live event to a large group of viewers may require the bandwidth of a T1 connection. Hence, the ability to deliver of multimedia data over the internet is limited by bandwidth capacity and cost of the network connection and also by the computational capability of the server and client computers.
Pending patent application VXTxe2x80x94703 describes the production of separate video, audio and annotation streams for synchronous delivery from a stream server to a client computer. However, if the stream server is not available or not affordable to the end user at the client computer, then the client computer may only have access to web servers which are not designed to provide synchronous delivery capability of the separate video, audio and annotation streams.
In view of the foregoing, there are desired techniques for generating integrated multimedia content such as video and audio frames, for synchronous delivery from a web server client computer(s).
The present invention provides interleaved multimedia streams for servers and client computers coupled to each other by a diverse computer network which includes local area networks (LANs) and/or wide area networks (WANs) such as the internet. Interleaved multimedia streams can include compressed video frames for display in a video window, accompanying compressed audio frames and annotation frames.
In one embodiment, a producer captures separate video/audio frames and generates an interleaved multimedia file. In another embodiment, the interleaved file include annotation frames which provide either pointer(s) to the event(s) of interest or include displayable data embedded within the annotation stream. Accordingly, each annotation frame includes either an event locator or an event data. In addition, each annotation frame includes an event time marker which corresponds to the time stamp(s) of associated video frame(s) within the video stream.
The interleaved file is then stored in the web server for subsequent retrieval by client computer(s) in a coordinated manner, so that the client computer(s) is able to synchronously display the video frames and displayable event(s) in a video window and event window(s), respectively. In some embodiments, the interleaved file includes packets with variable length fields, each of which are at least one numerical unit in length.
These and other advantages of the present invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed descriptions and studying the various figures of the drawings.